Nightcrawling : Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 - the youngest ever Booker nominee

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 - THE YOUNGEST EVER BOOKER NOMINEE

A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system—a debut that announces a blazingly original voice.

Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Royal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the 9-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.

One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. And her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland police department.

Full of edge, raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before.

Nightcrawling is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising.

MEDIA REVIEWS

'A rare and compelling meditation on the powerless... not only a fearless investigation of justice, guilt and prejudice, but an allegory of the potential power of speech, narrative and fiction itself... Nightcrawling marks the dazzling arrival of a young writer with a voice and vision you won't easily get out of your head' - Guardian

'Both a searing depiction of sexual exploitation and a gripping account of a struggle for survival... grimly captivating... rich and inventive' - Economist

'An uncommonly assured debut... Nightcrawling is written with a poet's ear and a novelist's sense of character, structure and ambience' - Observer

'Mottley's fluid, instinctive writing soars... this feels like a remarkable debut, one that holds an illuminating if unflattering mirror to modern America. It is exciting to wonder what might lie ahead for this writer' - Sunday Times

'Kiara is as virtuous and put-upon as any heroine in Dickens. But she is always a lively presence on the page even at her most downtrodden, thanks to her expressive narrative voice... the risks she takes generally pay off so well that one finishes the book grumbling: nobody who has just turned twenty has any business writing this well' - Sunday Telegraph

'Leila Mottley has a poet's delicate touch when she tells us the most brutal, heart-crushing truths. This is an electrifying debut' - Dave Eggers

'This book proves its author is a literary star in the making' - Elle